Young Love
by Kalira69
Summary: Hakoda sees more than he wants to, one day at the Western Air Temple, and finds himself newly aware of his son's nascent adulthood.


While not a sequel, this is somewhat of a spiritual successor to A Father's Perspective. (Its working title was 'Hakoda Watches', this story's working title was 'Hakoda Interrupts')

A surprising number of people (to me, at least) loved seeing Hakoda's POV when I wrote it before; I hope you all like this one as well. (It was just as much of a surprise when this idea grabbed me as the first one. Hakoda is apparently sneaky.)

* * *

"Where's Sokka?" Hakoda asks his daughter, resting a hand on her shoulder. She leans back a little from where she'd been peering into the cooking pot.

"Hm? Oh. . . I'm not sure." she says, and shrugs. A delicate frown tugs at her lips as she looks over the courtyard. "Probably with Suki." Her lips quirk slightly; not quite fondness, Hakoda thinks, but closer to that than anything else.

"Mm. Thank you, dear." Hakoda tells her, and she smiles up at him. His heart wrenches a little, because she looks so like her mother when she smiles, but it has been a long time and the regret is now more for the fact that he missed his baby growing up than for the ache of his beloved wife's loss.

Sokka is not with Suki, as it happens, who he finds chatting with Toph and, it appears, attempting to salvage something less like prison clothes out of the, well, prison uniform she'd been wearing. For now she is clad in a brilliant crimson robe, possibly from the airship they'd commandeered to get here. It looks like it fits, and it is _already_ less like prison clothes, but he knows she is a warrior and supposes it isn't very practical.

When the girls' chatter pauses for a moment, Hakoda repeats his question, and Suki smiles. "I think he was going to practise?" she says, and he frowns, confused. "With his sword." she adds helpfully.

"Sparring with Sparky, then, probably." Toph says with a snort. Hakoda blinks, but thanks the girls and moves away to look for the boys, curious now. He hasn't seen much of Sokka with his sword; bits and pieces during the chaos of the failed invasion and awkward glimpses around the rocking of the gondola and flashes of fire at the prison as they escaped.

He isn't sure where they may be sparring, since both the courtyard the kids have made their camp in and the lower one where the Avatar and his teachers practise are empty, but Hakoda wanders along the pagoda to explore, not too concerned about it.

The temple is somewhat sad to walk through. So many remnants of a people that are now almost entirely gone. Hakoda wonders how the happy, energetic young Avatar can stand it being here himself, in the abandoned spaces of _his_ people, probably knowing what this place was like before it was . . . attacked. Before the Fire Nation turned on the rest of the world.

Hakoda frowns as his thoughts turn dark and unpleasant, his steps slower and heavier.

He is startled as he turns down a hallway just inside the pagoda - one side is almost open to the canyon below, he supposes it's more of a balcony than a hallway - and hears a clang. Swords, perhaps. As he has been looking for.

He follows the path to its end, where it _is_ actually enclosed for a short distance, and steps through an open doorway that leads to a smaller courtyard, slightly more sheltered than the others. Sokka is there after all, and Hakoda begins to smile, but it freezes on his face as he sees Sokka's back thump against a pillar with a harsh shove from Zuko.

Hakoda's jaw firms. There are no swords between them, and as Zuko follows him, pinning him there . . . this is too far. If they had been sparring, Sokka has clearly lost already, pinned and still losing ground and apparently unable to struggle effectively. Zuko brings one hand up, almost higher than his own shoulder, fingers curled into a fist, and Hakoda's heart drops as he pictures a blast of flame being punched into Sokka's face.

He breaks towards them, his throat choked with fear and his tongue leaden.

Hakoda is sorry, faintly, under his fright and shock, not for himself - though he'd actually been coming to like the often quiet boy - but for his son, because Sokka seemed to count him so closely as a friend. He scowls as braces himself to draw Zuko's attention - he doesn't have a weapon on him, not even the sword that _Zuko himself_ had found on the airship and presented to Hakoda, but he has to-

Then Hakoda stops, not far from the boys and so suddenly he almost stumbles. He realises that- that Zuko is not threatening Sokka and Sokka is _not_ pushing him away, not even trying. One hand - so like Hakoda's, but still so much smaller and more fragile - is wrapping around Zuko's shoulder, in fact, as though even to draw him nearer.

Zuko is slim and still seems so much a boy, when he stands beside Hakoda, but beside Sokka, and especially with Sokka pressed up against the stone beyond his body. . . He seems fully grown already, a broad-shouldered man, tall and if not quite _imposing_ , still. . .

Hakoda thinks of Bato towering over him, wood against his back and broad shoulders - a broader grin - blocking out the rest of the world. He strangles back an uncomfortable cough and slinks backwards towards the doorway, watching as Sokka's arms slide around Zuko's neck and he pulls the bigger boy down. Zuko lets out a startled sound which fortunately covers the sound Hakoda makes bumping into the wall by the door.

Hakoda cringes a little as he watches Zuko's hands slide down Sokka's body, and with a scramble that isn't quite graceful but isn't clumsy either - it makes him wonder, unwillingly, how practised they are at this - Sokka's thighs are hugging Zuko's hips, his back still to the stone pillar. He sinks one hand into Zuko's hair, visibly rough as he pulls it, but the sound that spills from Zuko's throat is _very clearly_ not a complaint and his hips rock against Sokka's as Zuko's hands visibly tighten.

Then the sound Zuko was making is abruptly muffled by Sokka's lips, and his legs are folding higher and closing tighter around Zuko.

Hakoda is very grateful to be ducking out of sight of them now, and wishes faintly that he'd been a little less shocked and managed to do so quicker. Or that he hadn't found them . . . _sparring_ at all.

He can't get the image of his little boy wrapped so eagerly around another person out of his mind and he really wishes he could. He can't blame the boy - either of them - Sokka is, after all, mostly grown now, and Hakoda remembers being a teenager, but. . .

Hakoda shudders lightly and goes to find his daughter again instead, trying not to think about the tableau he left behind.

Hakoda hadn't realised before - or perhaps had simply not thought about it - but he notices that night that Sokka's bedding is laid out quite near beside the mostly-red heap of Zuko's. He remembers that Katara had said they relegated the boy to a room away from the rest of them when he first arrived, but he has slept here in the courtyard with the others since Hakoda arrived, at least.

And while they may not be behaving as they did in private out _here_ , when Hakoda walks past both pallets in the middle of the night - he gets a cup of water half as an excuse to do so - he finds that they aren't really in separate beds any more. His eyes are accustomed to the night, and Hakoda can see clearly enough in the moonlight, at least enough for the larger details. One of Zuko's arms is stretched across the pallet behind him, draped over Sokka's waist, but it appears that Sokka is the one who closed the distance between them.

Sokka is plastered mostly against Zuko's back, his arms locked around Zuko's ribs. One of his long legs is hooked over Zuko's thighs and his head is cocked almost awkwardly against the back of Zuko's shoulder.

Sokka sighs, smacking his lips and letting out a deep sound that is not quite a snore. Then he squirms a little closer, body arching against Zuko's back and pushing his arm aside. Snuggling.

His leg slides down a little lower as he shifts, but falls between Zuko's rather than disentangling from the other boy even a little.

Hakoda realises he can see this because neither of the boys' blankets are covering them.

He hesitates, but after he finishes his water, watching them - they don't move again, save for the slow rise and fall of breathing - he moves directly for the two now-blurred-together pallets. He crouches and reaches for the blanket that looks easier to reach - a slightly faded crimson in daylight, he knows, but now a rusty shade uncomfortably similar to drying blood.

Hakoda barely has a split-second to register one of the bodies beside him tensing before there is suddenly much more light, stinging his eyes. Instead of flinching away from it, he freezes as a hand surrounded by a curl of bright fire launches towards his chest, only to stop a heartbeat later. The flames stay where they are.

His eyes flick from the extended fist to Zuko's face. He is awake now, obviously, his body tense but still mostly prone, probably because Sokka's weight is pulling him down, Sokka's determined body wrapped around him - Sokka's arms really are wound securely around his ribs. He pulls his hand back, fist relaxing.

Hakoda meets dark gold eyes and doesn't know what he is going to say, though he is thankful Zuko seems to have recognised him quickly enough to halt his attack. Though that is a surprise, almost more of one than his sharp reflex to attack in the first place.

The boy blushes, a deep, ruddy shade that is easy to make out in the light of the small fire flickering in his hand. It goes out, a moment later, as Hakoda arches his brows at Zuko. He ducks his head, shifting uncomfortably, and Hakoda smiles slightly and shakes his own head, then reaches out to the blanket that had dropped from his fingers when Zuko jerked awake. Sokka mumbles incoherently and his arms briefly tighten further as Zuko moves.

Hakoda gently tugs the blanket up over the boys, and Zuko stares at him, something uncertain in his eyes, both frightened and somehow bold. Hakoda makes a soothing, hushing noise and rises from his crouch, stepping away.

He glances back at them from a couple of paces away and sees Zuko still watching him, bright eyes gleaming in the low light. Then they close, and Zuko's pale hand slides over Sokka's arm, his fingers folding between Sokka's as he tugs Sokka's arm closer around himself.

As he walks away, Hakoda fancies he can see a small smile curving Zuko's thin lips, but it is nothing more than a fancy, in the renewed darkness of the courtyard and from this distance.

He returns to his own pallet and thinks he still wishes he hadn't seen them earlier, pushing together so differently than the way they are now, wishes he didn't _know_. . . But not, truly, that they weren't . . . this, whatever they are.

Hakoda remembers being Sokka's age and in love - in love with a beautiful girl who had a soft voice and a fierce smile, and just as in love with his best friend, who had a kind face and a body that made Hakoda feel small and protected.

He can't wish for Sokka not to feel that way himself, the racing beat of a daring heart and the uncertainty and hope, fun and . . . yes, even the passion. And while it might not be an easy choice for an adolescent romance, this boy with a harsh past and a shadowed brokenness hiding behind his eyes, Sokka has . . . never really taken the easy path. Hakoda's brave, bold son.

When Hakoda wakes the next morning, the boys are no longer tangled up together and Sokka is neatly in the centre of his own pallet instead, tucked in properly. Zuko's is empty and the boy himself is nowhere to be seen. Sokka would not have tugged his blanket over himself in that way, Hakoda knows - Sokka rolls himself up in blankets until he looks like a resting tiger seal. _That_ has not changed since he was a small child.

Zuko rose early this morning, and then . . . tucked Sokka in before leaving him alone?

Hakoda has never actually seen Zuko asleep in the mornings when he wakes, though, perhaps the boy is merely a painfully early riser. Hakoda yawns and stretches, lingering for a few minutes more, though he hears at least someone else stirring, and Suki is up and awake already.

She's by the firepit, but Hakoda hopes she isn't planning to attempt breakfast; the girl is an incredible fighter, but she cannot cook an edible food that Hakoda has seen yet.

Zuko returns to the camp just as Hakoda is thinking this, passing by Suki on the way to his pallet. He's only half-dressed, and he looks _more_ like a grown man like this, Hakoda thinks.

Zuko pulls on his shirt and surcoat, then, as Hakoda rises, goes to light the fire with a murmured apology for not having done it before. Suki laughs and waves off the apology before Zuko nudges her away and she nods, collecting a couple of the empty waterskins and leaving the camp.

"Good morning." Hakoda says quietly, waiting until he thinks he won't startle the boy.

Zuko jumps and slips sideways, nearly putting his hand down in the fire, so apparently Hakoda misjudged that, at least. He looks up at Hakoda, eyes wide. One . . . much more than the other.

Hakoda doesn't stare at it, and hasn't since he met the boy - he's seen many men with nasty burn scars - but . . . most men who sustain a burn as severe as this one don't survive. And to the face. . .

"Ah. Good morning." Zuko replies not quite smoothly, dipping his head and settling neatly at the fireside once more. He darts a nervous look at Hakoda even as he pulls the rice pot into his lap.

He is preparing to make breakfast, Hakoda sees with some relief. He's not sure _how_ the young warrior-prince came to learn how to cook, but he is, at the very least, much better at it than Suki. Hakoda offers his help, then pauses, glancing up. Suki is still not back in sight, so he broaches the topic he was thinking of.

"I'm not going to try and," he pauses, speaking carefully, "dissuade either of you from each other."

Zuko looks up at him uncertainly, and Hakoda wishes he knew why the boy always looks so skittish around _him_ specifically. He barely seems to acknowledge fear even when he's tempting fate or courting death, as he had at the prison, but the nervous look that comes into his eyes when he's facing Hakoda doesn't seem right even now he knows about the boy's relationship with Sokka.

"You. . ." Zuko trails off.

"Sokka is nearly grown." Hakoda says, not without a pang for the thought. ". . .so are you." he points out.

Zuko just looks at him, and his expression doesn't _look_ like that of a mostly-grown young man; he looks unsure and nervous and achingly young. Oh, the horrors of being an adolescent and forging through _feelings_ for the first times, Hakoda thinks, amused.

"It isn't my place to dictate his choices to him, much less yours to _you_ ," Hakoda clarifies gently, "as long as he's not in," he had been about to say 'danger' but the painful irony of that given their situation - and what Sokka, along with his friends, has been doing - chokes him, "trouble." he finishes instead.

Trouble like not understanding why one lover might be hurt and angry that the other had been offered an engagement necklace, Hakoda thinks with an internal wince. Hurt and anger that had hardly been lessened by the confusion of the one in the middle who had somehow expected nothing to change.

No, Sokka seems to have somehow balanced the girl he used to be interested in with the boy he is _now_ , and all of their feelings, well enough to have avoided _quite_ the pitfalls Hakoda's father had, quite unhappily, had to pull him free of as an adolescent. Thank the spirits, Hakoda thinks sincerely, because he isn't sure he could do the same.

* * *

About half of the requests I'm working on right now are for this pairing, but I am still accepting requests over at my Tumblr (Kalira9).


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